


I am not afraid to keep on living

by Morgyn Leri (morgynleri)



Series: As It All Burns [12]
Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, GFY, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-15
Updated: 2015-09-15
Packaged: 2018-04-20 21:09:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4802294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morgynleri/pseuds/Morgyn%20Leri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Let herself hurt, and let the master see she hurts. Let it slide over the surface of her mind as a flood rolling down a desert wash.</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>Rabé looks away, staring at the streaking light of hyperspace as a wave of bitter anger washes over her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I am not afraid to keep on living

Her new master is not a kind one as Watto had been, but the pain is a tool Shmi knows, and accepts. Let herself hurt, and let the master see she hurts. Let it slide over the surface of her mind as a flood rolling down a desert wash, digging a little deeper in the familiar furrows while it lasts, and sinking into the sand to be left alone as long as it can be. Drawn upon when she needs to show the master she has learned his lessons, but otherwise left beneath the surface.

Other lessons are easier and faster learned. She has never been more than one invisible servant among many in a household, but the role she is being shaped for is not so different. Invisible in a different manner - all the court she is to be a part of needs see is the black-robed shadow of her Master. There are others who play the part of unseen servants, while all eyes are drawn to her and her master.

The hardest lessons are the ones where her master rips into her mind, forcing unwanted knowledge on her. Trying to shape someone new as if she were a piece of desert rock to be cut and polished and painted.

Even the knowledge is useful, and she lets it settle like boulders tumbled by the flood left to dry on the sand. Wind and sand and time will wear any rock down until it is nothing more than sand itself. Streaks of gray and black and ochre across Tatooine pale, patterns in the dunes and washes that dance with the storms.

* * *

Rabé refuses to remain in bed once she wakes, even though she has to lean on Dormé as she hops from bed to fresher to lounge, insides aching and muscles protesting. The medical droid hadn't been able to save everything, but it's a small price to pay for knowing everyone else - Padmé above all - had escaped the Imperials reach. Even if some of them had risked themselves to come back for her.

They're days travel away from where they had rescued her when she wakes to a lounge empty of her sisters, and no knowledge of when she fell asleep. Rabé struggles to push herself up onto her one remaining foot, and flinches hard enough to fall back when she feels an unfamiliar hand at her elbow.

She's steadied by an invisible hand, and Rabé turns her head to look at the Jedi. Not the tiny slip of a girl who she has hazy memories of helping to carry her out of the cell she occupied, but the Master. Kel Dor, if she remembers the species rightly, with a mask protecting the vulnerable parts of his face. A vulnerability that would have been a liability on a rescue mission.

"Thank you, Master Jedi." Rabé inclines her head as much as she dares, with her balance still uncertain. Eventually she will adapt, she must. She cannot be unable to protect her Queen.

"You are welcome, handmaiden." The Jedi tilts his head in return, his hand still at her elbow, helping to compensate for her missing limb. Rabé is torn between gratitude - a feeling she dislikes - and annoyance born of wounded pride. "Your sister will return shortly."

That makes her smile, and gesture for the Jedi to let her drop back into the chair she'd been sleeping in. Better that than to have to rely on someone not one of her sisters to keep her on her feet. Foot. Feet. She will have two again, perhaps. If there is money enough to give her that mobility once more, instead of shunting her off to some other task. Something to keep her busy, and make her forget she can no longer be who she had trained to be since she was barely into her second decade.

Rabé bites back a sigh at her circling thoughts. She will continue to serve her Queen, and will stand at her side once more. She will not allow herself to do anything less.

A rustle of fabric draws her attention back to the Jedi, watching as he settles in one of the other chairs, hands vanishing into the deep sleeves of his robes as he folds them.

"Why did you rescue me?" Rabé isn't sure why she's asking the question, much less asking it of someone who hadn't been part of the group that had boarded an Imperial ship to pull her from their cells.

The Jedi is silent a long moment, watching her with eyes Rabé can't see behind the mask. "If we did not, who would have?"

"My sisters." Rabé knows they would come for each other, no matter where they are, even for the body. "They would have come for me with or without your aid."

Tilting his head, the Jedi acknowledges her words, but Rabé cannot stop feeling like she's missed the point of the question he'd given in reply to her own.

"You had no obligation to save one woman, no reason to risk the life of your apprentice on what might have been a futile mission." She frowns, leaning forward, wishing she could read the Kel Dor's features behind his mask. "What point does it serve? There must be missions which would save more lives with less risk to you."

"There are. Should we have taken one of those, and left your sisters to rescue you alone?"

"If the Jedi had done what they should have, you never would have been involved in this war. There would have been no war to fight."

Rabé looks away, staring at the streaking light of hyperspace as a wave of bitter anger washes over her. If there had been no war, she would still be whole, and she would not have lost as many of her sisters as she had. She never would have needed to be rescued, or to be ready to let herself be killed - murdered - for the sake of so many more than she'd ever imagined. She'd been trained to be the shield between her Queen and danger, not to be a soldier or a martyr.

"The war would have happened, but perhaps not as soon." The Jedi's voice holds a weariness that Rabé wants to hate, but recognizes too well as a mirror to her anger. "Even if it is too little, we must do what we can."

"How did you not see?" Rabé looks back at the Jedi, her voice sharp and hard. "How did no one see what he was making of himself? We walked away because there was no other choice, save to bow under the heel of the corporations and their best ally. We fought once to save Naboo from that fate, trusted that we would not have to spill that much blood again to keep our world the beauty we love."

"And now you must spill more to have that chance again." The Jedi doesn't flinch away from her or from his own words. "As must we."

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from the song "Famous Last Words", by My Chemical Romance.


End file.
